Microsoft to raise price of Xbox Live come November

Microsoft isn't going to be getting many love notes for this one: in November …

Xbox Live is a powerful weapon in Microsoft's Xbox 360 arsenal, but gamers aren't likely to be happy with an unexpected and unexplained increase in the price of the service. "I wanted to let you know that as of November 1, 2010 we are increasing the price of an Xbox LIVE [membership] for some members," Major Nelson announced on his blog. "This price increase only affects Xbox LIVE Members in Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom or the United States."

Here's how it breaks down in the US:

Old price

New price

One month

$7.99

$9.99

Three months

$19.99

$24.99

One year

$49.99

$59.99

In the UK the price will go up £1 per month, Canada will see a $1 CAD per-month increase, and Mexican gamers will pay 100 pesos extra for a year of service. Remember that finding game cards on sale for less than the going rate is common now, and that shouldn't change after the price increase. Heck, you can even buy a bunch of cards now and lock in the current price.

Xbox Live is constantly being updated, and the service is much more robust now than it was at launch, but everyone is going to have to make the judgment call for themselves: either cancel your service to send a message, or continue paying. Companies are less sensitive to angry comments than they are to changes to their bottom line.

I'm on the camp that thinks its still worth it. I just don't have the inclination, time or wish to spend that much money on gaming. With Xbox Live, I can play the same games over and over again.

My total $$ value spent on gaming this year has been less than 100$. The subscription, a rental or two and a couple of small Xbox Live Arcade games. The rest of the time, I spend it playing COD: Modern Warfare 2 online. I will probably buy the new Call of Duty, and with that I'm set for the next year.

Why would it be lower? Higher subscriber base, but also more deals (likely with kickbacks) to get services from LastFM, Netflix, ESPN, Hulu+, etc. That plus increase in labor costs over the past 5 or 6 years and the fact that the 360 now has a robust enough install base that they don't need to offer cut-rate pricing all suggests that the service would get more expensive. They frankly have added a lot of value to Live since it first came out. I'd like it to be cheaper but I wouldn't mind kicking in an extra $10. Amortized over a year that's still a pretty good deal.

To be fair they're going to have to spend a significant amount of money to upgrade their network for all the new Xbox owners once Kinect is available.

Why? The fact is that their networks won't have to be upgraded anymore than other online MMO's servers have to be upgraded to deal with the new influx. Server space is CHEAP today, and setting up more servers won't take THAT MUCH out of their bottom line necessitating a 20% increase.

Can't you stack Gold membership up to 3 years? I'd say buy your cards now and stack as high as you can before the price goes up.

They'd love you to do that when they shitcan the service in 3 years.We have had a 360 for almost 3 years and just did our first year of Live 2-3 months ago so we can watch netflix. I'll definitely let it lapse as that is the only thing live is used for.

get what ya pay for in this life and with costs rising and no economies of scale to be had, more users = more cost not less for this sort of thing. Therefore prices go up.

two choices pay up or give up.

thankfully PC gaming not got this problem at mo, certainly not for the want of trying by game companies though. Not tried Playstation gaming but bet it is not a patch on how good xbox live is reputed to be

Keep in mind that ~1/6 subscribers (17% of the subscriber base) will have to drop in order for this shift to be economically damaging to Microsoft. In reality it's probably a much lower margin than that, considering the high-end outliers who spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in microsoft points.

I had one gold membership, which was purchased for me as a gift. This increase is just another reason why I won't pay for gold. I just don't understand why we have to pay to play mp games that are included on the $60 disc. I don't have to pay extra to play PS3 games and I don't have to pay extra to play PC games (or Wii games for that matter). When I was on gold, I didn't get anything better than what I get from PSN or Steam or Battle.net. I don't care about cross-game chat or any of that crap. Just let me play mp!

It will be interesting to see how much ink gets spilled over an extra $.83/mo. I got a worse increase on a few other services in my home that give me less value this year, so I am not quite as pained. Interesting to note than since Live launched, $50 with inflation works out to $60 now. Wonder if that is driving the amounts.

I had one gold membership, which was purchased for me as a gift. This increase is just another reason why I won't pay for gold. I just don't understand why we have to pay to play mp games that are included on the $60 disc. I don't have to pay extra to play PS3 games and I don't have to pay extra to play PC games (or Wii games for that matter). When I was on gold, I didn't get anything better than what I get from PSN or Steam or Battle.net. I don't care about cross-game chat or any of that crap. Just let me play mp!

Same for me. Even worse, 90% of the time you're paying and you don't even get dedicated server. My friend at MS gave me a prepaid live card (because I'd never pay for such a thing) so we could play Lumines together. It didn't work right off the bat, instead we had connection issues. It turned out we had to forward ports to play because it was peer to peer! Why did he have to pay for an online service for me so we could play a peer to peer game? I haven't even turned the thing on since then I've been so pissed.

There's one feature I use XBL for that's playing games online. LastFM don't use it, Netflix yea I have a wii and a PS3 that does that for free, or more to the point, does it for the money I pay to netflix for the service and my ISP to send the bits to me, ESPN, really? worthless, Hulu+, another pay to use a service I'd already be paying the people to provide the service to me game, facebook, "I'z playing das games on mah Xbox....LOLOLOLOL", twitter, yea it's called a cell phone most people are gonna use one, or your computer.

So 60 bucks to play 2 or 3 games that I paid $60 to begin with and are only able to access the 2nd 1/2 of it, online play, if I pay the M$ overlords for the ability to have some tosser with a 9600 baud modem host the game....

I'd be willing to pay $10 more per online game to have it be able to be played online, for free, until they rotate out the current system of online gaming. Aka when they removed Halo 2 from XBL. If you wanna have all the avatar, facetweeingESPN, pay for a full gold, let us who don't want or need that crap have another option.

The only way $60 a year makes sense to me is if Microsoft sends the people who did their coding for true-skill to every person on XBL so they can curb stomp him for 8 years of garbage, imbalanced games.

Oh this is terrible news. This was the PERFECT opportunity to put a nail in the coffin of that PSN+ monstrosity. If they had DROPPED the price by $10 that would have made sense to destroy that paltry service.

I hope this additional cost will remove all the ads? (LOL)

Stack up on XBox Live Gold year membership cards now folks. For those of you claiming that XBox Live will be gone in 3 years...you are terrible at prognosticating industry trends. XBox Live (in one form or another) will be here LONG after the current generation of consoles is gone.

I had one gold membership, which was purchased for me as a gift. This increase is just another reason why I won't pay for gold. I just don't understand why we have to pay to play mp games that are included on the $60 disc. I don't have to pay extra to play PS3 games and I don't have to pay extra to play PC games (or Wii games for that matter). When I was on gold, I didn't get anything better than what I get from PSN or Steam or Battle.net. I don't care about cross-game chat or any of that crap. Just let me play mp!

Actually, Steam can do cross-game chat. And achievement tracking. Pretty much everything XBL does, Steam can do...for games that integrate it. Unfortunately a lot of games don't.

I still feel the value that XBL (Gold, obviously) adds is worth what I pay, so I'll still pay it. Not like I ever pay full price anyway. And it doesn't matter what bits are on the disc, multiplayer is a continuing service that has continuing cost, and part of your XBL dues go to covering that...things like matchmaking, stat tracking, etc, these things aren't free.

That Steam chooses to offer these services for free (and actually, to my knowledge they generally don't do the matchmaking; that's left to the publishers) is irrelevant...they're on a different business model...especially since Steam games can't be resold or transferred.

Quote:

Why would it be lower? Higher subscriber base, but also more deals (likely with kickbacks) to get services from LastFM, Netflix, ESPN, Hulu+, etc. That plus increase in labor costs over the past 5 or 6 years and the fact that the 360 now has a robust enough install base that they don't need to offer cut-rate pricing all suggests that the service would get more expensive. They frankly have added a lot of value to Live since it first came out. I'd like it to be cheaper but I wouldn't mind kicking in an extra $10. Amortized over a year that's still a pretty good deal.

Netflix and Hulu+ at least require additional subscriptions (at least I think Hulu is supposed to). LastFM is already free on the web. ESPN is a whole 'nother animal, and I'd be unsurprised if that's actually part of what's driving this price hike. But for the rest it's hard to justify charging more for the added "value" of services that are already available for free, or that the customer is already paying for.

Still, I agree that overall the value of XBL has increased, and it's still worth the new price. I'll continue to pick up discounted cards, but I'll continue my subscription.

I had one gold membership, which was purchased for me as a gift. This increase is just another reason why I won't pay for gold. I just don't understand why we have to pay to play mp games that are included on the $60 disc. I don't have to pay extra to play PS3 games and I don't have to pay extra to play PC games (or Wii games for that matter). When I was on gold, I didn't get anything better than what I get from PSN or Steam or Battle.net. I don't care about cross-game chat or any of that crap. Just let me play mp!

Same for me. Even worse, 90% of the time you're paying and you don't even get dedicated server. My friend at MS gave me a prepaid live card (because I'd never pay for such a thing) so we could play Lumines together. It didn't work right off the bat, instead we had connection issues. It turned out we had to forward ports to play because it was peer to peer! Why did he have to pay for an online service for me so we could play a peer to peer game? I haven't even turned the thing on since then I've been so pissed.

Wow, welcome to 2002, man. I thought people had gotten past whining about this half a decade ago...guess not.